Mona Charen Quotes

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests

Let me let you in on a little secret. There is no such thing as an international community. There are self-maximizing, self-interested states that will push their interests as far as possible.

We must recognize that every nation determines its policies in terms of its own interests.

The reputation of those countries which cater to the foreign policy interests of other states at the expense of their own national interests will go down regardless of how they explain their actions.

But it is well to remember that we are dealing with nations every one of which has a direct individual interest to serve, and there is grave danger in an unshared idealism.

Obama's foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront.

Unilateral preemption should not in any way be the model for how we conduct international relations.

No nation has friends only interests.

President Obama, like every other leader on Earth, is still going to be looking out for national and economic interests. States don't cease to be states overnight just because they get a great visionary as their new president.

The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism.

There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

Every government is in some respects a problem for every other government.

Just as the United States doesn't like others to take charge, other countries also don't like the United States to play a dominant role in the United Nations.

The pursuit of one's own interest seems to be the rule for international relations, without the common good of humanity being taken into consideration.

The simple fact about alliances is that different nations have their own interests.

All foreign policy is the intervention of one nation's domestic politics into another nation's domestic politics.

You cannot have individual foreign policy. You cannot have celebrity foreign policy.

No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation.

There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics.

Even allies don’t share every single interest that you have. That’s a law of nature in the international system. They will tell you most of what you need to know but there may be some things that they don’t tell you that you need to know in order to formulate your policy as wisely as you can.

Putin responds to threats, to illegal sanctions, and to incessant propaganda with statements that governments need to respect each other's national interests and to work together for common benefit. No politician in the West speaks in this way.

Vladimir Putin likes Donald Trump because he supports this view of the world, that the big guys can carve it up, sit and talk about the world, carve up the countries, shape borders. For Putin, treaties, alliances, Nato, the EU are stumbling blocks.

My main concern is with the world order

Each state claims the right to control interests foreign to itself when those interests are such that it can control them without putting its own interests in danger. ... other powers only recognize this right of intervening in proportion as the country doing it has the power to do it.

As long as the problem of world reconstruction remains the center of interest for all nations, blocs having similar attitudes will form and operate even within the League itself.